D&D 4E Things wrong with 4e: The Far Realm

[Grimmjow]

I've never been to fond of the far realm, especially when in 4th edition every aberration was far realm spawned. I prefer a tad more variety.

In my setting I let Limbo kill it and take some of its stuff.

4e foulspawn are very cool though.

But your picture is a mind flayer!

 

[Doug McCrae]

Agreed. Have you ever used this in a D&D campaign? If so, how did it go?

No, I haven't. Last time I ran D&D it was influenced by British legend and folklore, so it wasn't the right sort of world to have an outer dark. The superhero campaign I ran before that had a few Cthulhu-in-space bits, but it adhered to the Marvel/DC view of space as a primarily science-y region.

I like the idea of space as a dark, gothic, weird, unknowable, magical place where the laws of physics as we know them on Earth don't apply, which seems to me to be the approach of the early 20th century writers of 'weird tales', but I've never actually pulled it off in a game. Partly I like it because it's so different from the modern view. The film Alien approaches this kind of presentation, though it's probably still a bit too science-y.

It's something that ought to work fairly well in D&D I think, as it's desirable for adventure locales and antagonists to be weird and unknown. A possible problem is that in D&D the PCs know too much about magic, due to the party wizard. It might be better if the PCs are grounded in science, and they head out in their spaceship, only to discover that space is nothing like the world they come from. White Dwarf #56 had a 'Call of Cthulhu in space' scenario called The Last Log, which took this approach somewhat. It's a pretty good adventure, iirc.

 

[steeldragons]

i don't want them to go into depth on the realm itself, i just want more info on monsters, and the powers and how it affects the world. Like my friend put it, "they should tease us more"

I gotta admit, I'd rather play CoC or ToC or something for my Cthulhu fix.

I think 4E overdone Far Realm but, then again, 4E has a knack of leaving no much room for mystery... that said, Foulspawn (4E's version) were a lovely addition to the game.

I've never been to fond of the far realm, especially when in 4th edition every aberration was far realm spawned. I prefer a tad more variety.

In my setting I let Limbo kill it and take some of its stuff.

4e foulspawn are very cool though.

Yeah, I think the key to the Far Realms is "less is more."

It's not "space between the stars". What if I want to have a D&D meets Star Trek/SpellJammers/Pigs in Space kinda game? It's not a dimension of pure Chaos (which, to my mind, should have the potential of causing insanity just as much as a momentary glimpse of the Far Realms). That's Limbo's job, as I've always understood it.

It is a dimension...incomprehensible! How do you "go into detail" on the incomprehensible? There's metaphor and analogy...but there can't (or shouldn't) really be "detail" or "explanation". Saying all of these things you encounter that have one (or one hundred) eyes and tentacles coming out of every orifice are from the Far Realms seems to be about as far as it needs to go. Actually adventuring into the Far Realms? That should be 1) nigh impossible or 2) come with severe after effects (assuming your body, at least, lives through the experience).

The Far Realms, themselves, are not something I, personally, have ever really used in a game/campaign. They are too..."out there." There's an awful lot of world, underworld, inner and outer planes, deities, guardians, immortal unknowns to get through/passed before you'd ever even see the threshold of "out there."

As with most things, in D&D, eventually, they try to detail it tooooo much! Leave the mystery. Leave the Far Realms...incomprehensible. Leave it to CoC!

Player: "So we've entered the Far Realms?! COOL! I float over to the great tentacled beast we see before us and attack! WOOHOO! I rolled a 20! I hit right?!"
ME/DM: "Blue."
Player: "What? Did I hit? If so, that's...43HP of damage."
Player 2: "I cast fireball on it. It's huge, right? Covering our whole field of vision, you said? So no worries about hitting any of the party, right?"
DM: "Bastion. To drive. Chicken Pot Pie."
Players: "Huh???!!!"

 

[Steely_Dan]

I think the other alternate idea for Far Realms I like is the idea t hat the Far Realms are the "Dreamscape".

There is The Realm of Dreams in the 3rd Ed Manual of the Planes, if I recall, and in 2nd Ed (Dragon/Al-Qadim) you had Iram, the City of Lofty Pillars in the Realm of Dreams.

Far Realm is the digs for squids.

 

[Gold Roger]

But your picture is a mind flayer!

Not quite. It's a bit small, but it's just a humble, real world cephalopod.

I do love my Lovecraft though.

I just think D&D doesn't need a Far Realm to pull of the whole ancient unknowable beings, things man was not meant to know, elder gods and cosmic horror thing.

Many D&D games run in very old world, that exists in an even older cosmology. With lost material worlds, ancient civilisations, dead gods, the lower planes and maybe even some time travel around, there's plenty of places for that already.

Third editions Lord of Madness was a great book on all this stuff for me, but if I remember correctly, it hardly used the Far Realm at all.

 

[Klaus]

To me, the Far Realm is what's on the other side of the Plane of Dreams. You brush against it in your nightmares, and those inflicted with madness can cause it to seep through into the world. I even yoinked Dal Quor and the Quori from Eberron to fill it up.

 

[vagabundo]

This is how I would picture the Far Realm mixing with the material world:

Wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Willows_(story)

Full Story: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Willows_(story)

One of my favourite supernatural tales.

 

[Recidivism]

I'd generally prefer it if something like the Far Realm wasn't treated canonically, aside from hinting at it. Even hinting at it should be done through unreliable sources -- In other words, the only references you should find to something like the Far Realm are in the mad writings of a character like Abdul Alhazred. This gives DMs needed room to improvise for their own campaigns if they use the idea, meanwhile for campaigns that don't use it, it's just some crazy guy's writing.

I didn't think 4E handled the Far Realm all that well. The 4E rules system is designed for a certain style of play. But the flavor of Cthulu-esque settings is entirely against that heroic, action-movie style of play. You would need to do dramatic changes to the game system and the expectations of the players if you wanted to handle the Far Realm right. It'd be a subgame rules set, in my view.